


Autumn

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Dark Past, Fae & Fairies, Fairy/Human Relationships, Family, Fantasy, Fluff, Friendship, Gardens & Gardening, Holly Poly, Married Couple, Mild Blood, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Romance, Threesome - F/F/M, courting, mention of child death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 08:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5702620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lulu tries to sever the link to her tortured past until someone takes away the pressure she puts on the scissors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



> Written for Holly_Poly for within_a_dream. Hope this works for you.

The two were newlyweds when Autumn fell around them. In more ways than one.

Jesse and Lulu were working on separate patches of earth in their garden when Lulu glanced up and noticed the trees. A particularly cold wind had pushed her hair out of the way and gripped her neck, bidding her to look up as the leaves altered their color from a dull green to a rust orange right before her very eyes. Her lips parted as the gust of wind moved on and she could somehow taste the air then: the sharp tang of apples on her tongue and the scent of clean dew drops. The dirt on her fingers seemed to pulsate with life and the trees sighed as every pore of her breathed deep. Jesse had brought her here just after their wedding, it had been their honeymoon in a nutshell, a place where Lulu could hide away from the pressures of the world and toil in her garden.

 _Their_ garden.

Jesse had given this to _her._ No strings attached. Other than that she love him, and that was the easiest thing in the world for her to do. Easier than remembering to breathe when she thought about where she came from, crawling out from the pit of cold, gushing blood and despair to fall straight down into Jesse’s strong, welcoming arms and his childhood cabin.

Her guardian angel. Cheesy, she knew, but there was no better description.

The cabin had been in Jesse’s family since he’d been a kid and was left to him after his mother’s passing. Lulu hadn’t been able to understand why Jesse would want to come back here, even if there were good memories. His entire family had passed on and there was no one left to share the cabin with but his new wife. From experience, Lulu knew the dangers of returning, knew the terrors that lived forever in places and consumed a person even years after the trauma. She hadn’t wanted to wreck Jesse’s beautiful memories, hadn’t wanted to taint even a portion of their purity.

The things he had to put up with.

She smiled as she watched his hands dig into the dirt, choking out weeds in order to allow for growth. Those gentle, giving hands were the same that unbuttoned her shirts with practiced ease yet trembled slightly with anticipation, the same fingers that grasped her hip and left colorful bruises, remnants of the therapy she needed from him, the markings that she was his and no one else’s, the way it weighed on him until she convinced him she was full again. The same fingers that cupped her cheek and trailed down her belly and dipped gracefully into her mouth.

The tree above her shook and leaves tumbled down around her, brushing her cheek, embedding themselves in her hair. The wind chimes sung in merriment from the back porch and Lulu pulled her hair back from her ear and listened.

There were secrets here, Jesse told her. He joked about the trees talking and the wind whispering and the dirt having a life of its own, growing wild things. He told her about things leaping from leaf to leaf in joy if you turned your head just right, about the mist of rain if you wished hard enough for it, about the darkness that always lay dormant deep in the woods but was forever held in check by something. Or someone.

If Jesse had married anyone but her, Lulu suspected they would have laughed. Teased him even. But Lulu believed in ghosts and worse. She had learned not to laugh in the face of superstition, that considering she was clumsy and generally unlucky she shouldn’t break mirrors or walk under ladders. Yet this world he had brought her into was paradise, heaven enough that nothing could touch her here.

Lulu put her fingers back in the earth and it taught her to breathe again.

* * *

 

In her dream there had been someone outside the window. She had put her hand on the cold glass and listened to Jesse’s gentle snores beside her. Lulu couldn’t be sure that she had seen anything, but there was no doubt that she had felt something. She believed in cold spots and following one’s instincts and trained herself to detect movement in the air, no matter how small.

_Lucia._

Sing-song and drawn out into three syllables. A female’s voice.

No one had spoken that name since her twin sister had died when she was seven, tumbling down into a sewer, the hand that reached for her never making contact. The months later of touching little and eating less, the years later of rage and broken limbs, the shame that told her she could never change her name. Whatever this darkness was it sensed her. She imagined smoke and cracked mirrors and scratches on her arms, yet in her mind’s eye there was the faintest image of black armor and fiery orange hair and green somewhere. Green everywhere, but she couldn’t figure out exactly where.

Green was the color of life. The energy that she had taken into herself upon moving here. It could be a sign.

Or it could be a trap.

Although, the darkness had never been female before. It was a wonder Lulu had found a man so giving considering her track record with men. Jesse was a strong yet gentle soul. He could crack a man in two but pick her up like she was every bit the porcelain doll. He treated her own power as strength and respected her quick temper and soft, nearly hidden resolve.

Men had broken her before: her father had hands like boulders that always knew how to make her bleed. No matter how often she cracked the same mirror in her mind there would still be her reflection looking back at her, bruises under her eyes, blood dripping down her forehead and pooling into her eyes, curving down her cheeks like two sharp points into her swollen mouth. Her history was one of ridicule and _pain_ , of blood and severed truths, of disintegration of self and skin that was little more than just stretchable.

The window was freezing cold under her palm, the trees rustling outside and calming her nerves. When she looked down there was blood on the palm of her other hand where it laid in her lap, face up, and when she caught her jagged reflection in the mirror above the dresser she swore she had not broken it. She had only broken a mirror once before, the same mirror she shattered over and over again in her bleeding head and thus, hundreds of years of bad luck.

Hopefully it wouldn’t rub off on Jesse.

She left the bed that had suddenly grown cold and treaded softly over to the mirror, picking up shard after shard until her palms were filled with cold bits of metal, until the blue of her eyes was drowning in memories. Until the realization hit Lulu that she was no longer running.

Lulu turned, hands outstretched and full of shards. She had been seeking someone to take her pain her whole life.

She could see the hands before she saw the faint outline of the figure. Those hands reached out and closed over hers but didn’t so much as brush against her skin. There was nothing left in Lulu that could cause her to jump, yet there was also this startling absence of fear, like she’d never be able to feel it again. It was that same chill that had been on the back of her neck, caressing her in a far less familiar and human way than Jesse did. It was bidding her to listen.

Lulu looked up and saw light, green and _black_ too. _Her_ black. Like the thing was taking Lulu’s own darkness away.

“Hey…,” Lulu breathed out, because this was _her_ darkness and she hadn’t given consent. Even if she’d cut herself willingly for reprieve, let alone needed consent. No one had asked for her consent except for Jesse so why it mattered after all she had been through made little sense, but she had to hold onto something familiar and human.

The thing looked up and immediately Lulu felt better. She didn’t want to call it a thing even though she knew she wasn’t human. The black armor was there, but it was so thin and looked so light and Lulu blushed to admit it complimented the color of her hair, like the color the leaves had changed that day, fiery to rust and back again. Had she changed the leaves?

“You’ve taken me off my watch, human.” Lulu still couldn’t make out the entirety of her and was too frightened to even try, even if her curiosity had never failed her even after living through every potential consequence. The smirk she may have just caught calmed her down more. “Distractions are punishable by grievous things.”

So was just being alive sometimes.

Lulu looked down at her hands and realized the shards of the mirror were no longer there. The faery - if that’s what she was - was holding them. Lulu had always possessed a fascination with all things mystical and strange, spending hours pouring over books about beings that could exist but few rarely saw. She believed in them all and what drew her the most were those that possessed wings. To fly away, to retract an extra pair of limbs from one’s back and jump into the cold night sky and leave every type of pain behind… it was a fate too good to be true.

She knew enough that there were good fae and bad fae. She knew some preferred to stay away from humankind and others lived for tormenting mortals, so why she would wish to seek this possible punishment out was beyond her. Maybe she was a glutton for pain, maybe their darkness would be shared.

The things Jesse had told her, the faint outline of wings… Lulu wasn’t stupid. She _knew_ what she was looking at, knew what had found her.

She searched the faery’s hands for signs of damage but found none, which caused her to wonder if faeries bled at all. _If she is what you think she is_ , she reminded herself. _Don_ _’t jump to conclusions and see things that aren’t there._ “What are you?”

“Your kind might call me a warrior.”

“A warrior,” Lulu repeated, trying to let that sink in. The word instantly made her head feel heavy. Why would there be warrior fae and why would they be here, in her own little private garden? She glanced over at Jesse but could still hear him snoring. _Still breathing._ Lulu sighed, and then the thought came to her. “Are you guarding something?”

The faerie came forward and touched her wrist then, a light touch that Lulu didn’t jerk away from. Her hands were still cut up from the glass, the sting was one of many familiar pains that didn’t bother her even after all this time, but the touch was warm and honest. Lulu came to realize that just because she wasn’t dead yet didn’t mean she was welcome here, since fae often liked to play with their victims, but this - she - didn’t seem threatening in _that_ way.

“Much like you are,” the faerie reminded her, her wings rustling in the background.

Lulu almost laughed but she didn’t want to wake Jesse. She also didn’t want to insult her. Faeries were even more sensitive than humans when it came to certain things: nothing was given lightly and every kind word said even the slightest bit wrong was a grave insult. Names were precious and debts always repaid. If someone did a faery a favor then they would never forget it and never stop until it was repaid; if someone did a faery wrong then they would not have much longer to live. These were things Lulu knew better than to play around with. Still, she didn’t have to fake how humble she was. “I’m no warrior.”

The faerie’s features shifted into one of surprise, and her gaze flickered down to her palms again. “I can’t heal, girl.” That was a reminder. Lulu knew that, Lulu had lived this before. Especially if it was only a dream.

“Don’t,” she bit her lip after the word. It was not like her to make demands, to be so careless. Yet, hating herself, she always had done so and been so. “Call me Lulu,” she asked.

Time stopped. There were shadows surrounding her, faceless and silent occupants. It was as if her mind had been opened and the darkness had been let out, all that she had tried so hard to leave behind. She shut the door forcefully, putting all her weight into it until she dropped to the ground and there were no longer hands banging at the other side of that door she had memorized every line and flaw of, much like herself. She stared at it in shock. The darkness was gone, and when Lulu looked up the faery’s eyes were black with fury, the itch in Lulu’s hands abating.

The pressure to fight back was no longer there. Certainty of security _was._  

The blood was dried on her hands now, and even though she wasn’t near any physical doors the faery knew enough. There were doors in Lulu’s memories, things she kept locked away that Jesse only knew a fraction of. “I’m sorry,” she said, though she couldn’t help the words from sounding forced. Too fragile. They were already breaking in the palm of her hand. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your land.”

There must be a door in the woods, a door that was guarded. Lulu had always been prone to opening doors; it was no use in claiming she wasn’t a threat.

The faerie watched her but made no move. Lulu wondered just how easy it would be when she could sense that hesitation, when she knew the faerie intimately knew her darkness. “I would leave before you’re a shell of a thing.”

She thought she knew which yet she asked regardless. “Is that a warning or a threat?”

A whirlwind of green and a firm but not suffocating amount of pressure was placed on Lulu’s hands and she lost herself for long moments. It wasn’t anything near being reborn again, _whole_ again, if that’s what she had become then she wouldn’t be who she was anymore, but the faerie had given her some tool to work through the turmoil, to weaken her grasp on the doorknob. 

“Faeries are drawn to darkness,” Jesse told her later, clasping her hand in the firelight. Lulu could see the gold band she had given him on his finger, purchased with the last of her saved income. She could feel the warmth of the fire for another moment before it spluttered out inside her, before she felt like she was dipped head first in cold water.

Lulu didn’t pull her hand away, but when she looked down Jesse was now grasping the tips of her fingers rather than the top of her hand. “Why are you telling me this?” She whispered even though they were almost the only ones in the woods. There were two houses nearby but they never acquainted themselves. Lulu liked to be away from people, had to be away from real life. She could feel the darkness deep in the woods, where she had trailed without Jesse only once before, but as much as it frightened her she trusted it more. Trusted it to not spread, trusted whoever was keeping it down.

It sounded ridiculous, yet Jesse wouldn’t laugh at her just as she would never laugh at him.

“Because,” Jesse answered. He let go of her hand.

Sometimes there were one word answers. Open-ended, just hanging there like unnecessary cobwebs. They didn’t bother her; she had only ever trusted one person in her life and that was Jesse. If she was in danger then he wouldn’t have brought her here. He had brought her here to _help,_ to give her time and space to work in their garden and write in her study and occasionally draw for inspiration. This was time away from the world.

Yet Autumn was coming sooner than she had anticipated.

* * *

 

Lulu didn’t realize the exact point when she started to call her Autumn. It could have been a word that just slipped into her head one day and its familiarity being something she clung to, the reassurance that nothing in her world had changed, that nothing needed to. Or it could have been put there by the faery herself, which was most likely the case because every time she woke up she could taste Autumn on her tongue. Ripe as ever. When she bit into an apple she could taste her, when she made love to Jesse she could taste her, when she lay awake at night and glanced outside the window for another reappearance she could _taste_ her.

There were imprints pressed into her skin, not scars exactly but nearly faded pink etchings. Invisible lips caught her off guard as they pressed into her skin and marked her, claiming her. The thought was frightening at first, to belong to someone else as she belonged to Jesse. She couldn’t find it in herself to resist. Nature bended under her the rest of the time: the branches moved away when she walked and the leaves caressed her face when she spread herself out in her garden.

Autumn was drawn to Jesse too. He laughed at the flowers growing in bushels around their cabin, and a path always formed before him in the woods when he went to fetch firewood. When they were outside together, Lulu could feel the wind and the air and the dirt caressing them both at once.

Yet even when they were indoors and away from the wind and from nature, the faerie always had a means of getting at them. Temperatures would fluctuate in their modestly sized cabin, and the fireplace would alternate between dying down slowly and roaring back to life. Jesse’s good mood seemed to hinge on his belief that Autumn was protecting them from something, watching over them.

And that was when Lulu realized that Jesse had met her before.

She was folding laundry and putting it away in the dresser when he entered the room. There were no accusations that needed to be thrown around, she wasn’t that type of person, yet she was surprised that Jesse had tried to hide this from her. She turned and put down the sweater she was holding. “Tell me about Autumn. Or,” she offered, “what did you call her when you were little?”

Jesse hid the small smile well-enough, yet Lulu could read it all too well in his eyes and the small patch of wrinkles etched into his forehead. There was mischievousness in those gray eyes too, a playfulness that Lulu had not seen much of. She had met Jesse a little over two years ago and had just about fallen head over heels for him, as much as she could for someone with her past and also someone who couldn’t have the luxury or fortune to believe in love. Lulu prided herself on knowing this man inside and out, yet Jesse had brought her here for too many reasons that had slipped past her once careful attention.

“I called her Red.” Jesse chuckled. “Maybe because I think I’m colorblind. Think she kinda hated it at first.”

She opened her mouth but he stepped forward and covered it with a hand that smelled of freshly chopped wood. Lulu would know him even with her eyes closed; that didn’t mean Jesse wasn’t still careful: his hand dropped almost immediately afterward and took her hand. “I wanted her to meet you. I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone like you, Lu. For all that time I was waiting, _she_ was there. She was my confidant, my best friend. She almost lost everything because of me but I helped her get it back, now she’s the head guard of her gate. Amazingly, that power never went to her head.”

Lulu’s heart stuttered in her chest. “Gate?”

Jesse’s eyes lit up and he smiled. “There’s seven gates to the lands of the Fae.” He sat down beside her, cupping her hand now in both of his. “They’re hidden and guarded, but I stumbled on this one when I was younger. My mother always told me there was magic here, and I wanted you to have a piece of it. Red just told me what I already expected to hear, how special you are.”

 _Special? Screwed up is more like it. So broken and tainted almost beyond repair until you found me. Until I_ trusted _you._

Lulu put a hand up to stop him from getting any more excited. “Jesse, how in hell did you know that she wouldn’t try to kill me?”

“Because….” Lulu was about to tell him off for stopping there but he jumped back into it. “Because I love you. Because I knew she would see what _I_ see in you. For someone not human, she is so like me in ways you can’t even imagine, Lulu.”

“She loves you,” Lulu breathed, a stab of remorse turning her chest to ice. The desperate look in his eyes betrayed that, his footsteps forever in her waking dreams, dragging her out here. The notion, no, _fact_ , didn’t anger her. However, it did make her feel sad and brutally forgiving and _cold_ , like all the warmth was leaking out of her and she couldn’t find the energy to scramble to get it back.

Jesse cupped her face in his huge though soft hands but the warmth there didn’t feel right. This wasn’t something Lulu wanted to over-react about, yet she couldn’t exactly help it. It was like there was this huge part of Jesse’s life that she had never known about, that she just had to accept right now in order to not be this massive hypocrite. “And she loves _you_. You feel her, I know you do. She’s just trying to court you.”

 _Trying to make me feel at home._ She spluttered as her brain caught up, “Court me for what?”

A sheepish look crossed his face. “Red gets lonely here. And she’s always been drawn to humans. But…,” he stood up and stepped over to the laundry basket, picking up where she had left off. “Just wait. She’s patient. Guess you kinda have to be when you’re thousands of years old.”

So Lulu waited. She tried to make the wind feel grating against her skin, tried to hate the leaves that wouldn’t leave her be and tangled in her hair, and she tried to make herself believe the scent of apples was now too overused and unpleasant, but everything about Autumn or Red or whatever she liked to be called was gentle and patient and waiting. It didn’t feel right for her to object, especially since this was no longer about consent anymore. It didn’t have to be.

She had been waiting her entire life for someone to convince her not to fight. For someone to give her one good reason not to.

So she closed her eyes and she thought about Autumn’s hands cupping over her own, the slightest bit of pressure shattering everything in Lulu Markum’s world to small, not so jagged pieces that rained down around her. She loved the rain, she knew it was because when Autumn came to her again in corporeal form her velvety skin was soaked in rain water and quenched Lulu’s every thirst and sung to the agony under her skin.

Yet Lulu stumbled too close to the door one day. Perhaps because she went looking for it.

Jesse found her an hour later, sprawled out on her back in the soft leaves, leaves that were rippling softly against her clothes and even softer against her bare skin. She opened her eyes at the movement and saw him stumbling toward her, clothes in disarray, one shoe on and the other off, hair ruffled as if just getting out of bed.

Or as if someone just ran their hands through it.

“I keep feeling hands on me all the damn time. She’s getting demanding.” He plopped down beside her and she stretched out her arm, fingertips brushing against him.

Lulu smirked because for once, she was the one at ease. The way she figured it, she, or rather, _they,_ were giving Autumn a much needed break.

**FIN**


End file.
